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I have been tasked with building a better bicycle frame, and I have been researching different metals to use when building this. I have decided that to make a “better” bicycle frame, I must make one that is durable, lasting, will not corrode in water, and is quite light. After looking at many metals, I’ve decided that I will use titanium, and steel. I originally researched platinum but decided against it, as it wasn’t as good as titanium in terms of strength against weight, and was more expensive, making it worthless compared to titanium.

Properties of Titanium

Titanium is a very strong metal, much like steel, but is not as dense, meaning that it’s lighter than steel. It’s also quite resistant to corrosion from water and air, and is a very poor thermal conductor, that doesn’t retain heat. According to Titanium Processing Center, the most common titanium alloy is Ti-6Al-4V, a grade 5 titanium alloy that is very strong, and not too dense. There is another alloy, Ti-3Al-2.5V, a grade 12 titanium alloy that is as strong, but easier to weld, making it easier to use, but it is slightly heavier in return. As I am not looking at the time it takes to make, or the cost of making it, I will be using the grade 5 titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V.

Properties of Steel

Steel is generally a very strong and dense metal alloy, that is usually a combination of iron and carbon. It can rust and corrode when in contact with oxygen or water, causing it to not be a very good metal to use on the exterior of objects, but it is a very poor conductor of heat. It is much cheaper and easier to produce than titanium, but isn’t very environmentally friendly, although a lot of it is recycled, lessening the damage.

Properties of Platinum

Platinum is a dense, malleable metal that is quite similar to silver, in which it is very precious, highly resistant to many forms of corrosion, but has very good thermal conductivity. It can last for a very long time, but isn’t the strongest metal ever and can bend quite easily, so in a bicycle frame, the metal itself won’t be damaged for a long time, but the structure of the bicycle frame can be damaged very easily.

Economic and Environmental Factors

A big factor to keep in mind with making a titanium bicycle frame is the cost of making it. Finding and processing titanium is already quite expensive, alloying it is more expensive, and using it to build something, like a bicycle frame, is even more expensive. This means that it would have to sell for a lot to make back the money spent on it, which is a big risk, especially when a lot of people don’t use their bicycles that much, as they probably wouldn’t invest so much money into having one.

Another big factor to remember is the environmental effect of getting the materials and using them to make the bicycle frame. Titanium is extremely environmentally friendly, as it’s naturally found in the earth and is recyclable. The other main metals in titanium alloys, aluminum and vanadium, are also extremely environmentally friendly, aluminum being very easy to recycle and vanadium being extracted without any harm on the environment.

My Choice

I will be using the grade 5 titanium alloy, Ti 6Al-4V, which is mainly composed of titanium, aluminum, and vanadium, as well as a little bit of iron, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and yttrium. Out of all the metals I’ve researched, titanium has been the least dense metal that is still very strong and reliable. As stated before, it will not corrode very easily, and is a very poor thermal conductor, meaning that it will not conduct or retain heat. I am choosing this alloy over the other one I researched, as I am not focusing as much on price or usability, and would rather the bicycle be easier to ride than to make.

In Science we’re studying the different parts of the human body, and so we dissected a chicken wing and looked at all of the different parts, as the structure is quite similar to a human arm, although it’s a lot shorter.

When we dissected the chicken arm, we noticed that the biceps and triceps would contract and expand alternatively. When the biceps expanded, the arm would straighten out, and the triceps would contract. When the triceps expanded, the arm bent, and the biceps contracted. We also managed to expose the bone and the cartilage on the edge of it, and it was very smooth, and hard to cut. The chicken has a sort of thumb-like part sticking out to the side at the end of the wing, and there’s a wrist joint as well as an elbow joint, quite like a human arm.

The different parts of the chicken wing are all used to make it function the way it was designed. There are biceps, triceps, tendons, ligaments, and joints, like in a human arm, and they’re all used to operate the wing and move it. The biceps and triceps are an antagonistic pair, meaning they work together, by contracting one muscle while expanding the other, and vice versa. The bones are attached to each other with ligaments, and tendons attach the muscles to the bones. If your muscles weren’t attached to your bones, they would be immovable, and you wouldn’t be able to use your muscles. This applies to chicken wings too. The joints are between two bones, and the ends of bones are surrounded by cartilage which is a smooth, yet tough tissue which protects the bones from rubbing against each other and getting damaged.

Chicken wings and human arms have a surprisingly large amount of similarities, such as having biceps and triceps, having wrist, elbow and shoulder joints, and having a thumb-like part sticking out at the end.

The chicken wing is adapted for flight in many ways. It has a large surface area, meaning it can catch a lot of air when flapping, and it’s very light, with the bones having very little marrow within.

The human arm is adapted for lifting and holding things in many ways. One of the biggest things is how it has fingers, which can be very precise, giving humans good fine motor skills. They can also bend at multiple joints within the fingers, making them able to grip things very easily and not drop them.

Have you ever gone to a supermarket, see something labelled as a superfood, and consider buying it? Have you ever ended up buying superfoods? When you see these superfoods, do you even know why they’re considered superfoods? Well, I’m going to tell you what exactly superfoods are, whether it’s worth buying them, and if the term itself is trustworthy and fair to use.

My Superfood: Tiger Nuts

The superfood I will be comparing to more common foods is the tiger nut. Tiger nuts, contrary to the name, are actually not nuts, but are actually tubers, like potatoes. They are believed to be a palaeolithic food, which means that it was a food that our ancestors ate commonly, which caused their evolutions, but there is no solid evidence, only deductions. What makes tiger nuts, or any superfood a superfood, is the nutritional value of the food. When you find a superfood, they usually have large quantities of nutrients in them, much larger than common foods like apples and bananas, and tiger nuts are no exception. They have extremely high quantities of magnesium, in which 100 grams is enough to give you roughly 15% of the magnesium you need daily. The magnesium is needed in your body because it keeps your body active and constantly reacting to everything else going on inside the body. Tiger nuts also have large amounts of potassium; simply eating 25 tiger nuts will give you 139mg of potassium, which is about the amount potatoes and avocados have, and even more than a banana! The body needs potassium to regulate muscle contractions which help the digestive system, as well as keeping cells and organs in your body functional. They also have some other nutrients:

While there is a lack of proteins, there is a huge amount of fibre, and a healthy amount of carbohydrates, but a little too much fat. The carbohydrates, both starch and sugar, are used as a source of energy, by being broken down. The fats are used to store energy, and are sometimes broken down into energy along with proteins if there are no carbohydrates and your body needs energy. The proteins are also used to keep the structure of the body and create blood cells that are missing. Fibres are used to clean out your digestive system to make it easy to digest food, and to keep your body from having problems like indigestion and diarrhoea.

Comparing The Nutrients To Regular Foods

To show you how much better tiger nuts are compared to some regular foods, I’m going to compare the amount of magnesium in it to the amount of magnesium in tofu because it has a lot of magnesium. Tiger nuts have roughly 90 milligrams of magnesium in every 100 grams, while tofu only has 58 milligrams of magnesium, which shows that tiger nuts have a lot more magnesium than tofu.

To test another nutrient, I’m going to compare the amount of potassium in tiger nuts to the amount of potassium in bananas because they’re well known for having lots of potassium. Tiger nuts have roughly 710 milligrams of potassium in every 100 grams, but bananas only have 358 milligrams of potassium, which means that tiger nuts are a much better source of potassium than bananas, even though bananas are known for their potassium.

To see how good the fibre is in tiger nuts, I’m going to compare it to the amount of fibre in lima beans, as it has a very high fibre content. Tiger nuts have approximately 33 grams of fibre every 100 grams, while lima beans only have 19 grams every 100 grams, meaning that tiger nuts have more fibre content than lima beans.

This shows that tiger nuts are really good in terms of their nutritional value, but have a little too much fat and are lacking in proteins. But are tiger nuts really worth buying? This is an important question, because superfoods are always ridiculously expensive, because of how healthy they supposedly are, even when they aren’t that healthy. But that’s something that changes with each person, and so it’s a question you need to answer for yourself, with your new knowledge on tiger nuts.

The Issues With The Word “Superfood”

Although some superfoods are actually healthier than regular foods, a lot of superfoods aren’t very super, and aren’t really any healthier than normal foods, but are still called superfoods in supermarkets. This is a big issue because the way superfoods are being called super is a lie that many people overlook, simply because not everyone knows about superfoods and what they are, and this causes people to like the sound of a “super”food and decide to buy it, especially when it’s so much more expensive than regular foods, and usually not worth it at all. This is a massive economical issue, as it makes so many people waste money on superfoods that do almost nothing for them, making them essentially pay extra money to shops for no reason at all. This is also an ethical issue, because it definitely isn’t right to trick and steal people’s money by lying and telling them that a food is “super” to make them buy it for a much higher price, thinking that it’s better than a regular food. Overall, I definitely think that using the word superfood isn’t very good, even with tiger nuts, because they don’t have enough proteins, and have a little too much fat.

The Industrial Revolution was caused by two big factors; the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812. The president at the time, Thomas Jefferson, set the Embargo Act of 1807 during the Napoleonic Wars, in which Britain’s navy had taken Americans and their cargo to help with the war. At the time, America was neutral, but when Britain forced American sailors into their army, Thomas Jefferson issued the Embargo of 1807 to restrict trade with any other countries, especially England and France. This was to make them respect America’s neutrality, and stop taking their men, but instead, America lost a lot of economy, and ended up having to produce their own goods. The War of 1812 was a war between Native Americans and Americans, because of American expansion. The Americans would’ve easily gotten rid of the Native Americans, but Britain aided the Native Americans by supplying them with weapons, like guns. This was the point where everyone realised that the United States needed better economic independence, as well as better transportation systems, and so America needed to manufacture their own goods to have economic independence, hence the start of the Industrial Revolution.

In our science class, we are in the middle of a unit called Mining for Mobiles, where we are learning about elements, and the periodic table. We are also doing a project on metals in technology, so we each chose a piece of technology to research the metals inside. I chose the Sony Xperia Z5, which is a smartphone by Sony, as the name implies.

The metals inside the Sony Xperia Z5, and many other electronics, are gold, and the three Ts, tin, tantalum, and tungsten. These metals each have a specific use because of their properties. Gold is used to coat the wiring on the circuit boards in electronics, because of how conductive gold is. Tin is used to solder the wires, because it has quite a low melting point. Tantalum is used to contain the electricity within the electronics, and tungsten is used to make them vibrate.

Each of these materials come from lots of places around the world, but that includes conflict mineral mines in the Republic of Congo.

Lots of armed groups in the Republic of Congo are smuggling what we call “conflict minerals” into neighbouring countries to have them sent to Asia, to be processed into components, to then be sent around the world for use in electronics. These conflict minerals consist mostly of gold, tin, tantalum, and tungsten; the materials used in many different electronics. These armed groups threaten people and enslave them, and make them mine the conflict minerals for them to smuggle out of the country. Because of this, these armed groups make millions of dollars illegally, and also cause the worst violence since World War II.

The production of electronics like phones takes so many rare materials that it has a very negative impact. Just as an example, a ton of iPhones would have 324x more gold than a ton of gold ore from the Yanacocha Complex, on average. A ton of iPhones would also have 13x more copper than a ton of copper ore from the Escondida copper mine, on average, and 6.5x as much silver as a ton of silver ore from the Cannington silver mine, on average.

These are both very large issues with the production of electronics, like Sony Xperia Z5s, so we need a way to solve these issues, or at least minimalise them. One way to do that, is to demand conflict-free products from companies that use conflict minerals in their electronics. Another way to help is to find a company that doesn’t use conflict minerals to produce their electronics. You could also look for a company that uses less rare materials to produce their electronics.

This would help, because when companies don’t take any conflict minerals, the armed groups in the Republic of Congo start to not make any profit, then they would give up on trying to make money off of conflict minerals. This would also help, because if companies that use conflict minerals, or lots of rare materials, have less customers, they’ll make less profit, and change their business, or change the way they produce their products, to be more ethical.

Before we started this unit, I really didn’t know anything about empires or colonisation, except that colonies were areas that were taken by empires.

Inward Reflection

A part of the presentation I particularly like is how much information we could get for our script, and how accurate our information was, considering how few sources we could find on the Dutch Empire, so I think we had some pretty good research skills.

Outward Reflection

The one thing I want people to notice about the presentation is how detailed it was, without it being very boring; the way we communicated our research in a simple, balanced way.

Forward Reflection

If I did the presentation again, I would polish it and make it neater, as it was a bit rushed and unorganised. I would try to have better self-management skills, to have more time, to make it easier to understand.

This unit, we worked on making an abstract portrait of someone close to us, that we know well. We chose what we were going to express about the person, then chose some pictorial elements, which are colour, setting, objects, direction of gaze, facial expression, clothing, and pose, and used them in our portrait. We also chose an influence to our portrait, like an artist, or a style of portraiture.

The person I chose to draw a portrait of was my dad, and he’s important to me because he’s taught me many things and always helped me, so I chose him, and I used the pixel art style of portraiture, because he likes old technology and games, where lots of things were very pixelated and you could see each pixel seperately. I expressed the idea that he liked retro video games, by making the setting inside a game center with lots of arcade machines, and making him have a happy facial expression.

The pictorial elements I chose were setting, objects, and facial expression. Setting is the way the background looks, and where it is, so if I drew a farm, it would represent my dad and how he lived with a farm. If I placed lots of different animals in the farm, it would show that the farm my dad lived in had lots of different animals in it through the pictorial element of objects. Facial expression is the way somebody looks on their face. If my dad’s facial expression was upset, it would mean that he was upset about whatever was happening at that time or place. I used the setting to show that he liked games by putting him in a game center. I used objects, by placing arcade cabinets all around him, to show that he likes retro-style games. I used facial expression to show that he is always happy, and that he likes arcades a lot. A style of portraiture that influenced my abstract portrait was pixel art, as it also represents my dad’s love for retro games, so I drew the picture in the pixel art style.